Sunday, July 06, 2008

Boston Market | 3rd Quarter, 2008

The Boston Market for Web technology jobs has rebounded after two dramatically down months. There are more job postings this month than last month for 19 out of 20 popular Web technologies.

Top 20 Web Technologies

The list of the most in-demand Web-related technologies has been updated and appears in the right-hand column along with links to job postings for that technology at Boston.com.

This quarterly report of the job market goes deeper than the monthly Boston Market updates. In particular, let's explore the remaining technologies that comprise the Top 50 most in-demand Web-related skills in Boston.

The Top 30

Rounding out the Top 30 are the following 10 technologies:

  1. IIS [ 104 ]
  2. Python [ 102 ]
  3. Visual Studio [ 99 ]
  4. Web 2.0 [ 98 ]
  5. DHTML [ 91 ]
  6. Tomcat [ 85 ]
  7. Acrobat [ 81 ]
  8. SEO [ 77 ]
  9. XHTML [ 75 ]
  10. InDesign [ 71 ]
Of these technologies the most valuable might be Visual Studio (#23) because it is the centerpiece tool for developing Microsoft-centric Web applications that incorporate SQL Server (#5), the C# programming language (#7), Web Services (#10), Ajax (#14) and ASP.NET (#15).

The Top 40

Rounding out the Top 40 are the following 10 technologies:

  1. Dreamweaver [ 67 ]
  2. "Content Management System" [ 67 ]
  3. Quark [ 57 ]
  4. Struts [ 54 ]
  5. DB2 [ 52 ]
  6. Ruby [ 51 ]
  7. social networking [ 47 ]
  8. ActionScript [ 34 ]
  9. VBScript [ 33 ]
  10. blog [ 32 ]

Of these technologies the most valuable might be Ruby (#36). A report at Dice.com called Expanding Opportunities in Open Source Software reveals that the open source Web development framework Ruby on Rails is in demand.

The Top 50

Rounding out the Top 50 are the following 10 technologies:

  1. ColdFusion [ 29 ]
  2. DOM [ 28 ]
  3. "Web standards" [ 28 ]
  4. Rails [ 26 ]
  5. Fireworks [ 25 ]
  6. wiki [ 20 ]
  7. QuarkXPress [ 19 ]
  8. WSDL [ 17 ]
  9. Adobe + Flex [ 14 ]
  10. CS3 [ 14 ]

Of these technologies the most valuable might be Rails (#44) because it is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework.

Out of Playoff Contention

Popular Web-related technologies that don't make the Top 50 include the following:

  • Silverlight [ 11 ]
  • Drupal [ 10 ]
  • WordPress [ 7 ]
  • Adobe AIR [ 3 ]

It's not that these technologies are not valuable, it is simply that there is little market demand for Web professionals with expertise in these skills compared to the Top 20 Web Technologies.

FREE Online Training Courses

Learning a new skill is just a mouse click away. If you are new to the collection of Top 20 skills supported in the Microsoft development environment (SQL Server, C#, Web Services, Ajax and ASP.NET) you might want to start with the following FREE online seminar:

ASP.NET 2.0: Building Applications

  • started Tuesday, July 1
  • continues weekly for five weeks

While the current version is ASP.NET 3.5 this gentle introduction provides and overview of Microsoft's approach to Web development.

The following two FREE training opportunities are much more in-depth and offer a certificate upon completion:

Ruby, JRuby, and Rails Application Development (with Passion!)

  • starts Tuesday, July 15
  • continues weekly for 19 weeks

Ajax and Web 2.0 Programming (with Passion!)

  • starts Wednesday, July 30
  • continues weekly for 20 weeks

Of these three technologies -- ASP.NET, Ajax, "Ruby on Rails" -- ASP.NET offers the most opportunities in the current marketplace as evident by the chart below.

However, Ajax and "Ruby on Rails" are two of the fastest growing technologies in the marketplace as evident by the chart below.

Check out Indeed's Job Trends to compare the absolute and relative values of your current skill set.